


So Lift Off, Love

by gallifreyburning



Category: Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Multi, OT3, because everybody deserves this including me, time lord/human cuddle pile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-22 23:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20330164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/pseuds/gallifreyburning
Summary: A reunion, sometime during the Time War.





	So Lift Off, Love

Narvin isn’t surprised when he rounds the corner and finds Romana pacing the TARDIS corridor. Her mouth moves, as if silently rehearsing a speech, and she pauses to stare at the closed door in front of her before her nervousness gets the better of her and she’s walking again, back and forth.

He clears his throat and scuffs a boot on the metal floor plating, to announce his presence.

She whirls around, lips pink and puffy because she's been chewing them. He’s worked and lived alongside her for decades, he’s seen her preoccupied like this a handful of times. He knows she’s been nibbling her cuticles, as well, without even having to look.

“Did she send you away?” Narvin asks, coming to lean against the opposite wall, across from the door.

“I haven’t even knocked yet,” Romana replies. She sighs, and then joins Narvin against the wall. They stare at the closed metal together, with the same scrupulous attention museum-goers might study the _Mona Lisa_. “I thought you might be in there.”

“She probably needs rest, after everything she’s been through. I didn’t want to intrude.” Truth is, his selfish need to hold Leela and never let go has been battling with his worry – worry about Leela’s disappointment in him, about her trauma, about how much she might have changed from the human he knew, at the beginning of the Time War. They’d practically carried her into the TARDIS, all three of them battered and exhausted, and Leela waved them away and stumbled off to an empty bedroom, closing the door behind her. That was over twenty-four agonizing, restless hours ago, and she hasn’t poked her head out since.

Romana slides down the wall to sit, legs bent to her chest, eyes still fixed on Leela’s door. Narvin follows suit, his legs sticking straight out along the floor, and crosses his arms.

“Do you … do you suppose she needs medical attention?” Romana asks hopefully: a justification for intruding.

“She doesn’t need a medic. Her wounds weren’t severe. Not this time, anyway,” he replies, trying to blink away the memory of the dark circles beneath Leela’s eyes, and the grey flecks in her auburn hair. There were new scars on her arms, puckered tracks here and there that disappeared beneath her clothes, long and winding. And that was to say nothing of her psychic and emotional scars, inevitable and inescapable during a war like this one. He aches to know every single detail of every hour of her life while they were separated; he simultaneously can’t stand to contemplate it, the idea of her suffering while he wasn’t in a position to help her.

Leela has always been strong and capable, and she survived. He and Romana survived, too, but they had each other; through everything this horrific war dealt to Leela, she was alone. Wrestling with shame over his inability to keep Leela safe, or find her sooner, he curls his fingers into fists and taps his boots soundlessly together. Without looking at him, Romana rests a hand on his thigh. The touch grounds him, pulls his grim thoughts out of a self-loathing spiral.

With practiced ease, he takes her hand in both of his and cradles it in his lap. Her fingers squeeze and her head tips sideways to rest against his shoulder. They never indulged in this sort of physical contact with each other before Leela left Gallifrey, but as the weeks and months ground on without their human, they had both been bereft. Leela was their buffer and a binding agent at the same time, and eventually her absence became so unbearable, they reached for each other across the void.

Now that Leela is here again, safe in their TARDIS, Narvin feels acutely aware that her place with them still exists, like a wound that never properly healed. She belongs here between him and Romana, three creatures whose fates are braided together like an inextricable tangle of cosmic strings.

Trying to wet his throat that has gone dry with wanting, he swallows with a soft clicking noise. Not a physical craving, although there’s a vague twinge of that, but an emotional wanting, a psychic wanting, a desire to share space and experience. The quiet sort of wanting that makes you know someone so well, you have a sense of when they’re craving tea and make them a cup along with your own. You notice when their knife has gone a bit dull and keep a whetstone in your trouser pocket, just in case they want it.

Narvin has collected two dozen whetstones from the two dozen worlds he and Romana have visited since they were exiled from Gallifrey. They’re laid out on the desk in his quarters, waiting.

_Waiting_.

“What if after everything she’s been through – after we took so long to find her – what if she doesn’t want to be here?” Narvin finally manages, meticulously straining every trace of panic from his words.

“Of course she wants to be here,” Romana replies instantly. She uses her presidential voice, the one brimming with confidence and conviction. The voice she employed to cow foreign dignitaries and steer the unruly High Council. The voice she knows he needs to hear, in this moment. “You’re right. She’s most likely exhausted. We can catch up with her later.”

“It would be for the best,” he agrees, “to let her sleep.”

Neither of them move from the floor, or divert their eyes from Leela’s door. Somehow this piece of metal inside the TARDIS feels more impenetrable than anything else that has kept them apart – an infinity of time, a universe of distance, a cadre of megalomaniacal Time Lords and tin-pot death machines.

Five motionless microspans later, Romana hazards, “Surely that's enough time. She ought to be rested by now.” 

Narvin shifts, his arse aching from the cold, hard metal floor. “If she answers, what will we say?”

“We’ll ask if she’s hungry.”

“Maybe she needs more blankets, too,” he muses.

“She'll probably ask for an adjustment to the water temperature on the TARDIS. You know how humans are, they want their bathwater boiling.”

“All right.” Squeezing her hand once, Narvin lets go and rises to his feet. His toes curl in his boots and he inhales deeply. “No time like the present.”

“Hazardous words, during a temporal war,” Romana mutters, stepping past him. She lifts her fist to the door and knocks once, firmly.

An eternity passes, or perhaps it’s only a microspan. The portal swishes aside, and Leela stands in the darkened room, squinting at them both. She has changed into a technician’s jumpsuit, something left behind from Gallifrey or created by the TARDIS, but sparkling clean compared to the blood and sweat-soaked skins she was wearing earlier. The welt on her left cheek was red when she came aboard, but has deepened to a mottled purple bruise now, speckled as the starfield above the asteroid where they found her.

“The water is fine, and I do not need more blankets,” she says, before either one of them can speak. “I am still very tired, but cannot sleep for all your chattering outside my room.”

He’d forgotten how keen her hearing was. What else has he forgotten? What other pieces of her has he mislaid over the years, things that fell into the abyss of time and memory? A pang of loss stabs through him, followed by a thrill of realization, that if she allows it, he might rediscover these lost things, in addition to exploring the new territory created between them during their separation.

“We didn’t mean to wake you,” Romana blurts out.

“We’ll leave you to your rest,” Narvin says simultaneously.

Leela looks back and forth between them, her gaze sharp and her eyes shadowed with dark circles, as if she hasn’t slept at all while she’s been alone in that room.

“You could leave, or you could come in,” she says with a shrug, as though it doesn’t matter to her which they choose. She turns her back and steps into the darkness, a shadow fading into nothing.

Without hesitation, Romana plunges in after her. She tugs Narvin’s sleeve to urge him along, although his feet are already moving, only half a step behind. For all Leela’s apparent indifference a moment ago, she collapses into both their arms at once.

This contact is different than the panicked, relieved embrace they shared when they found each other again, in the midst of chaos. Here in the temporary safety of their TARDIS and the time vortex, all three hold each other with a sort of surrender, soft with wordless acknowledgement of the pain of their separation. Romana clings to Leela's front, Narvin’s arms wrapped around both women from the side. One of her hands cups Romana's head, her other arm slung around his back. Her fingernails dig into his shoulder blade, pressing little half-moon indents through his shirt. Her chin rests against his shoulder, her forehead tipped sideways to Romana's temple.

Narvin brings his mouth to the searing warmth of her neck, lips resting where her pulse flutters beneath her skin. He’s fairly certain that if the other two weren’t supporting him, his legs would give out. Romana makes a faint noise that might be a sob or a hiccup, smothered against some other part of Leela’s body.

“I have been so very tired for so long,” Leela says, words thick.

“I’m sorry,” Romana mumbles.

“Not now,” Leela replies, accompanied by the gentle sound of a kiss against the other woman's cheek. 

Narvin opens his lips against Leela’s neck, breath stuttering, because there are countless things he ought to say, and none of them materialize properly on his tongue. Instead, his grip on both women tightens, somehow pulling them closer, as if he might merge all three of them into one being by sheer force of will. For the first time in ever-so long, he feels like he can breathe properly.

He’ll bring Leela a whetstone tomorrow. And another one the day after that, and the day after. He’ll sit with her for however long she allows, and ask her to teach him how to sharpen a knife. 

“We should rest,” he finally manages.

“Yes. Please,” Leela says. “I would like that.”

Somehow, still holding each other, they shuffle to the bed. It doesn’t matter that it’s too small for three people, because they end up in a tangle. Leela nestles between them, arms and legs jumbled together, hands clutched tight even as they relax into each other. Narvin kisses Leela’s temple, his fingers stroking the hair at the nape of Romana's neck. The other Time Lord brushes her thumb across his jaw, fingernail tracing a familiar path through his beard. Leela curls into his chest, elbow bent across his waist, as her other leg hooks Romana’s knee and draws her in tight. Their breathing gradually comes into sync, the only sound in the dark as they fall asleep together.


End file.
